I admire Trump for saying that Martin Hill was “on our side, a Trump guy” when Hill disrupted Trump’s speech in Grand Rapids by yelling that “Israel did 9/11, it was dancing Israelis, not dancing Muslims.”

I admire the way Trump has blown up the old elite-driven Republican Party and enraged the neocons.

I applaud Trump’s support for auditing the Federal Reserve.

I love Trump’s hints that he would pursue a Charles Lindberg-style “America-first” foreign policy (which the war-criminal establishment decries as “isolationist”) by eschewing foreign commitments, refusing to take sides in foreign quarrels including the Zionist genocide of Palestine, and “making other countries pay for their own defense” which of course means withdrawing hated American occupation forces from all of our 900 military bases in more than 80 countries and letting those countries be independent for a change … while unleashing the American domestic economy and enabling the rebuilding of our infrastructure.

Heck, I’m not even that outraged by Trump’s insistence that yes, it actually IS illegal to enter the country illegally.

If I thought he was really going to “reveal who really knocked down the World Trade Center,” audit and maybe end the Fed, shut down the American Empire, and genuinely make America great again, I would support him wholeheartedly, even if he occasionally says nasty things about Muslims.

But I don’t trust him to do those things, any more than I trusted Obama to fulfill his promises of “hope and change” back in 2008, when I voted for Cynthia McKinney.

Trump strikes me as more of an ego-driven opportunist than principled reformer or honest patriot. His tendencies toward scapegoating minorities, enthusiastically endorsing torture, and kissing up to Zionists do not bode well.

I hope I’m wrong.

Meanwhile, most of the Muslims I know are not so ambivalent. In the article below, two leading American Muslim intellectuals and activists, John Andrew Morrow and Charles Upton, give The Donald a piece of their minds.

-KB

What should Muslims say to Donald Trump? A Veterans Today exclusive

By Dr. John Andrew Morrow and Charles Upton

A speech delivered at Rutgers University on Sunday, March 27, 2016

Organized by Muslims for Peace, Inc.

9th Annual Prophet Muhammad Day Interfaith Conference

Introduction

Since some of you attending this conference today clearly belong to the Muslim faith, I feel it is appropriate for me to compare and contrast Donald Trump, who has called on his followers to take an oath of allegiance to him personally, with the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, who received the Pledge of Allegiance from his followers under the Tree at Hudaybiyyah.

I beg the believers in both the Messenger of Money and the Messenger of God to bear with me with patience and forbearance as I expound upon the radical differences between the respective ideologies and personal qualities of these two messengers.

Language

The Prophet Muhammad, may peace and blessings be upon him, preached to the people in the language of the people, in Classical Arabic, and presented to the people, the Qur’an, a masterpiece of eloquence, unparalleled and unsurpassed, that set the standard for Arabic grammar.

Donald Trump also speaks in the language of the people, at about the level of a fourth-grader, though he does indeed have a very good brain. When it comes to vocabulary, he has been well-advised by paleo-conservatives and closet Klansmen. He has attentively watched, read, and studied the speeches of such masters of semantic simplicity as Adolf Hilter, Benito Mussolini, and Francisco Franco. When appealing to angry, frightened people without the background or the resources to understand exactly who or what is destroying them, 20th century history has proved that radical simplifications and recognizable scapegoats are definitely the way to go.

Wealth and Wisdom

The Prophet Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace, taught that “There is no greater wealth than wisdom.”

But all the wisdom in the world can’t buy you the Trump Tower—or even a cup of coffee for that matter. Donald Trump seems to believe that his billions are proof that he is a wise man, but he can only make the equation between wisdom and money by reducing wisdom to “the art of the deal,” to something that requires only insight into human greed and fear. But there’s a lot more to wisdom than that. Specifically, in terms of what it takes to be President of the United States, wisdom includes a knowledge of history, an understanding of different human cultures and psychologies, and a willingness to make hard and painful decisions tempered by enough human compassion to prevent the holder of that office from turning into a mad dog. Can anyone here imagine Donald Trump as a person capable of conducting the kind of “delicate diplomatic negotiations” that JKF did during the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Wisdom is also inseparable from human dignity because it is based on a true understanding of what a human being is. The Prophet Muhammad, his wives and his companions—unlike Donald M. Trump and some of those closest to him—were models of modesty and self-respect. The leader who has no interest in maintaining his own dignity can never respect or protect the dignity of the people he leads. Power without dignity has a fatal flaw in it; it will either crack under pressure or go to work destroying everything it sees.

Humility

The Prophet Muhammad, may God grant us his intercession, taught that “Humility increases dignity… Be humble and Allah will exalt you.” He said: “Indeed, the most beloved of you to me and the nearest of you to my position on the Day of Judgment are the best of you in nature and in humility; and the furthest of you from me are the vainglorious, that is the arrogant.” He also warned that “Most of those who go to hell are the arrogant.”

Donald Trump, however, is proud, haughty, and arrogant: qualities that are unfortunately admired by many Americans whose pride in their nation has been betrayed by the globalists, whose future has been stolen by the super-rich, whose human rights have been liquidated by the national security state, and who have been told by the regime of “political correctness” that they have no right to exist.

But the arrogance of the self-styled billionaire will never translate into the well-earned self-respect of a hard-working American husband or wife or parent. Self-respect comes from the love of family, the love of community, the love of country, the love of justice and the love of God, not the arrogance of the hate-monger or the threats of the bully.

Non-Violence and Just War

The Prophet Muhammad was persecuted for professing that God was one and that people should be good. Although he was oppressed, exiled and physically wounded by his enemies, and his followers assaulted, tortured, raped, starved, and murdered, he taught his followers to turn the other cheek. He said that: “The strong man is not the one who is the best at fighting; the strong man is the one who can control his anger.” And when the time came to fight to throw off oppression and establish justice, that battle was not to be carried on in a state of anger, or simply as a way of relieving one’s feelings, but according to the strict standards of just war.

On the other hand, Donald Trump said (and I quote): “If we’re attacked, we’ll beat the shit out of them….We have to beat the savages.” And given his often-expressed views on Blacks, Mexicans and Muslims, I think I have a pretty good idea who these “savages” are.

Civil Society

The Servant of Allah, Muhammad the son of ‘Abd Allah, immigrated to Medina, as a refugee, with many of his followers. The people of Medina, a town that was roughly half Jewish and half pagan, accepted him as their leader. Muslims, at that time, numbered in the hundreds. The non-Muslims were probably in the tens of thousands.

The first thing that the Prophet Muhammad did in Medina was prepare the Covenant of Medina, known also as the Charter or Constitution of Medina. He created an Ummah, a Motherland, or a State. Identity was no longer based on tribe or kinship. It was based on citizenship.

“They are one community” said the Prophet Muhammad. “To the Jew who follows us belong help and equality,” he wrote, “He shall not be wronged nor shall his enemies be aided.” As the Prophet said, “The Jews…are one community with the believers.” Jews, Muslims, and even polytheists, were one: so long as they were members of the Ummah.

Some scholars view Muhammad as the founder of secularism. Others, like myself, stress that he created a Confederation of Believers, a pluralistic and inclusive society under the cover of the Creator. He granted citizens all the rights and freedoms that we enjoy in Western, secular, democracies, with one fundamental difference: that these rights were bestowed, not by Man, with a capital M, but by God, with a capital G.

But Donald Trump, as he has repeatedly expressed, does not believe in civil society. He does not believe in diversity and multiculturalism. He wants to make America great again which means he wants to make America white again. But America was never “lily white” as Trump likes to believe.

There were millions of Black slaves before the Civil War, and—before the white race came—millions of Native Americans, as there are again today. But Blacks will never again be reduced to slavery, nor will Native Americans ever again submit to genocide. And we must never forget that the Prophet Muhammad accepted people of all races into his Ummah; Bilal, one of his closest companions and the first muezzin, was a freed Black slave. As the Prophet expressed so eloquently:

“All humankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over a black nor does a black have any superiority over white except by piety and good action.”

For Donald Trump, however, there is no room for Muslims in America. According to his supremely uneducated opinion we are a source of insecurity, we have never contributed anything to the building of this country. However, maybe 10% of the Black slaves imported into North America, who built much of the economic power of the nation, were Muslims. Some sources suggest that as many as 20 to 30% were Muslims.

(We must be careful never to let Trump find this out, however, or he might decide to start exporting their descendants.)

Setting aside the pseudo-scholarly fantasies of people who believe that my people, Native American people, were actually Arab Muslims—they insult us, and themselves too, with their condescending, paternalistic, fairy tales—Muslims have helped build and shape this nation from the 1800s to the present, starting with the Syrian-Lebanese settlers and homesteaders who settled in North and South Dakota. Traveling Muslim traders were also an important presence in the newly-settled West.

There are nearly 3 million Muslims in the United States. Some sources say 5 million. Some even claim 7 million. One quarter of them are African Americans. How can less than 1% of the population pose such a threat in the eyes of the majority? They themselves are under a much greater threat from hate speech and hate crimes.

Muslims are among the most highly educated Americans. Muslims are some of the most entrepreneurial people in this country. We don’t take jobs. We create jobs. We start businesses. We have excelled in every imaginable field. Is this any reason to boycott Muslims and ban them from entering the United States?

“If you cannot guarantee that there is no terrorist among them, then none of them should be allowed entry” says Trump.

Really, now? In that case, we should ban men from entering America. Yes, ban men.

The last time I checked most rapists were men. 18% of women are sexually assaulted, at some point in their lives, by men.

Hence, following Trump logic, we should ban men. After all, how can be guaranteed that no man who immigrates to the United States will sexually assault a woman. We can’t. So, ban them all.

Freedom of Religion

The Prophet Muhammad, may God showerhim with prayers and salutations, protected and defended religious liberty: “To you your religion and to me mine.” In the proverbial words of the Holy Qur’an: “Let there be no compulsion in religion.”

He granted Covenants of Protection, and Charters of Rights and Freedoms, to Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian communities.

He personally protected the Christians of Najran, the Monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai, the Monastery of St. Macarius in Egypt, and the Monastery of St. George al-Humayrah in Syria. He protected the holy sites in Jerusalem and placed them under the guardianship of the Armenian Orthodox Church.

He protected the Christians of Persia. He protected the Zoroastrians.

And he protected the Jews in northeastern Arabia.

In the Covenant of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of Najran, the Messenger of Allah says

“I commit myself to support them, to place their persons under my protection, as well as their churches, chapels, oratories, the monasteries of their monks, the residences of their anchorites, wherever they are found.”

He also adds:

“It is not permitted to remove a bishop from his bishopric, a monk from his monastic life, or an anchorite from his vocation as a hermit.”

Donald Trump, however, is committed to closing mosques, in clear violation of the American Constitution and the Universal Charter of Human Rights, both of which grant freedom of religion.

I have no objection to closing Salafi/Wahhabi/Jihadi/Takfiri mosques, though only if sedition and conspiracy and incitement to terror can be proved against them by due process of law. Mr. Trump, however, should beware of sweeping generalizations.

According to the FBI, only 0.001% of self-professed Muslims are terrorists. They have the passive support of maybe 7% of Muslims. So for Trump to deliberately alienate and potentially radicalize the moderate Muslim majority of the United States is a policy of sheer madness—unless it is his real plan to incite civil conflict in order to build his power, at which point we are no longer in the field of madness but in the field of evil.

Some Trump supporters have openly voiced their support for placing American Muslims in internment camps, as they did with Japanese Americans, for “reasons of national security.”

This would not be anything new to us Muslims. After all, we suffered a boycott and were placed in what was effectively a concentration camp outside of Mecca for three years where we stood steadfast alongside our beloved Prophet. These were the Years of Sorrow. We remember them, and, if Trump has his wicked way, we are soon to relive them.

Torture

The Prophet Muhammad, may God grant him prosperity in the Hereafter, prohibited torture. The Christian world kept torturing people until recent centuries. Drowning witches. Burning people at the stake. Quartering them with horses. Who am I kidding? The Western world still tortures people today. It is called “extraordinary rendition.” It is called Abu Ghraib. It is called Guantanamo Bay. It is called state and federal prison. Muhammad, however, said that: “He who tortures in this life will be tortured in the hereafter.”

Trump however, may God grant him prosperity in this life and poverty in the Hereafter, has declared:“Torture works”—an idea which has been discredited as a method of gaining reliable intelligence by many studies—though if Trump’s real goal is to destroy civil and human rights and replace them with collective terror, then he is certainly right: torture works.Speaking of torture, he callously stated that: “Waterboarding is fine with me.” Well, if that is the case, then may he be water-boarded for eternity in the next world. Amen.

God is watching, Mr. Trump. God is listening. And, if you don’t believe in God, there is something called in the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. Your statements concerning torture can and will be used in a court of law in the event you are accused of committing war crimes.

Retaliatory Assassinations

The Messenger of Allah, Muhammad, the son of ‘Abdullah, may countless blessings be upon him, forbade the killing of non-combatants. Apparently ISIS terrorists missed that class—but little can be expected from a group that is home to so many drug-addicted drop-outs, mercenaries and criminals. As you have heard, over and over again, the Qur’an is clear on the subject:

“Whosoever kills a human being for other than murder or corruption on earth, it shall be as if he had killed all of humankind.”

In the instructions given by the Prophet; in the instructions given by Abu Bakr; in the instructions given by ‘Ali, Muslim soldiers were formally and categorically prohibited from killing non-combatants.

Trump, however, has come with a new Talmud, a new Gospel, and a new Qur’an… Yes, he has come with a new Halakhah, a New Canon Law, and a New Shariah: “I would intentionally kill families to defeat ISIS.”

Retaliatory killings. A crime against humanity. A war crime.

Islamic law and international law both allow the killing of combatants. They do not, however, permit the targeting of non-combatants.

“No bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another,” says the Qur’an.

We cannot punish Trump for the fact that his father was reportedly a Klansman. If U.S. law followed Trump’s principles, which we do not, then he most certainly would be.

Trump believes in pre-emptive strikes for reasons of national security—and many Americans fear that he is making himself the potential target of a pre-emptive strike.

Trump knows damn well that he cannot deliver on 99% of his promises, which means that he is going to make some of his supporters very, very, angry when they realize he has sold them out, as he already has done at the recent AIPAC convention where he pandered to the Zionists. So we have to be extremely careful to preserve the life of this reckless and dangerous man; his assassination could have dire consequences for the whole nation.

Muslims definitely do not want Trump dead—though some of them would apparently like to see him in an institution for the mentally, morally, and ethically insane.

Oath of Allegiance

Last, but not least, the “Prophet” Trump proposes that all American Muslims should be entered into a registry. And not only that, the Messenger of Materialism proposes that all American Muslims be made to take a loyalty oath to the United States of America.

No government, no candidate for office, no non-Muslim entity or individual has the right to demand that Muslims, specifically as Muslims, perform this or that action, or adhere to this or that belief. U.S. Muslims are bound by the shari‘ah, by same the civil laws that apply to all U.S. citizens, by their conscience, and by nothing else. As Muslims, as Americans, we are all bound to the American Constitution.

As immigrants, millions of Muslims have pledged allegiance to the United States to become citizens. Our children, on a daily basis, pledge allegiance to this country. No way, no how, are we going to be forced to pledge allegiance specifically as Muslims to prove that we are loyal to this country. We refused to be targeted in such discriminatory fashion. We refuse to be scapegoated. We reject the implication that we are not faithful Americans. We refuse to apologize for crimes that we have not committed. We refuse to be forced to prove our loyalty when we prove our loyalty already on a daily basis, living in this country, developing this country, contributing to this country, and taking up arms to defend this country. There are 5000 Muslims bearing arms for the United States. Tens of thousands of Muslims have served in the US military. Show them some respect whether or not you agree with US foreign policy.

I propose that we respond to Donald Trump’s call for a loyalty oath to the U.S. Government with a loyalty oath to of our own to our Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, in the form of the Covenants Initiative, where Muslims swear to obey Muhammad’s command not to rob or vandalize peaceful Christian communities or kill peaceful Christians. We agree that there are scattered ISIS supporters among U.S. Muslims and that they need to be identified—but since we do not have the resources of the FBI, our contribution to this effort is the Covenants Initiative. After all, Muslims are much more likely to tell the truth when swearing allegiance to the Prophet on the Qur’an than when pledging loyalty to the Federal Government on the Bible. Here is our oath:

We the undersigned hold ourselves bound by the spirit and the letter of the covenants of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) with the Christians of the world, in the understanding that these covenants, if accepted as genuine, have the force of law in the shari‘ahtoday and that nothing in the shari‘ah, as traditionally and correctly interpreted, has ever contradicted them. As fellow victims of the terror and godlessness, the spirit of militant secularism and false religiosity now abroad in the world, we understand your suffering as Christians through our suffering as Muslims, and gain greater insight into our own suffering through the contemplation of your suffering. May the Most Merciful of the Merciful regard the sufferings of the righteous and the innocent; may He strengthen us, in full submission to His will, to follow the spirit and the letter of the covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the world in all our dealings with them. In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Praise be to Allah, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds.

Any Muslim who wants to sign this oath or learn more about the Covenants Initiative may go to www.covenantsoftheprophet.com. We urge all U.S. Muslims to sign, in the few remaining months before the general election, though we pass no judgment on those who do not; acts are judged by their intent, and we have no special insight into the reasons people make the choices they do. We only wish to emphasize is that the opportunity to choose has arrived.

Besides being eminently newsworthy as a bold Muslim challenge to Donald Trump, this loyalty oath to the Prophet Muhammad will have three visible effects:

1) The Covenants Initiative Oath resoundingly declares our unbending opposition, as Muslims, to ISIS and other Takfiri terrorists, but does so without committing us—as Muslims—to any specific U.S. government policy, or asking us to bow to the demands, or the threats, of any popular leader, or expecting us to surrender our freedom of religion to any government on earth. Like all other American citizens, Muslim Americans have the right to exercise individual freedom of choice as to which policies we will support, which leaders we will follow, and which candidates we will vote for.

2) The Covenants Initiative Oath opens the door to not simply to ceremonious expressions of mutual amity between Muslims and Christians, expressions with no teeth in them and little relevance to conditions on the ground, but to the possibility of real, working alliances between the religions in the face of a common enemy. This enemy has many faces: ISIS and other terrorists, who are happy to kill Muslims as well as Christians; Islamophobia; Christophobia; the slander of Christ in the media; the slander of Muhammad in the media; the burning of mosques; the burning of churches. When a mosque is burned, why can’t Christians come out in support of Muslims? When a church is burned, why can’t Muslims come out in support of Christians?

3) The Covenants Initiative Oath is the best way we can think of to respond to whatever good there may be in Donald Trump’s proposals, while uncompromisingly discrediting his unconscionable attacks on freedom of religion, his irresponsible statements that have gone a long way toward legitimizing hate crimes against Muslims in this country.

We Muslims have all we need from our own religion and tradition to brand ISIS and the other Takfiris as the devil-worshippers they are. Instead of trying to meet some mark that secular culture sets for us—a culture that can only play the less-than-convincing role of guardian of human rights and civic virtue when matched against the worst criminals on earth—we need to recover, hopefully with the help an interested and open-minded media, our own supremely humane and civilized standard of what it is to be a human being. All we need to do then is act on it.

Muslims are coming out against ISIS all over the world. 70,000 Muslim clerics signed a mass fatwa against the “Islamic State” in India. 1.5 million Muslims have endorsed it. In Morocco, leaders and delegates from many Muslim nations have recently met to issue the Marrakesh Declaration, reaffirming the rights of non-Muslim religious minorities. In the United States, Daisy Khan of Wise Muslim Women is producing an anti-ISIS community guide for mosques, and working with Google to interrupt ISIS recruiting in cyberspace. Will Donald Trump credit any of these efforts? Is he even aware of them? Or would he rather see U.S. Muslims with no alternatives but to descend into terrified silence or drift into an equally terrified sympathy with the “Islamic State”? If he pleads ignorance of these efforts, we would be happy to educate him; the same offer goes for all the presidential candidates, Democratic, Republican or Independent.

Because if any candidate is foolish and short-sighted enough to reject the growing opposition to ISIS coming from Muslims themselves, then such a person does not deserve to be President of the United States. But if the candidates are willing to learn about our efforts and accept our help against ISIS and their ilk, who represent the worst threat to global civilization since the Nazis, the Stalinists and the Khmer Rouge, then we are more than willing to give it. But whatever decision they may make regarding us, we of the Covenants Initiative and its allies have already made our decision: ISIS must be stopped—and so must Trump.

In Closing

The times of trials and tribulations have fallen upon us in the midst of the Great Apostasy of the Western world. During these dark days, a “prophet” has arisen, a “prophet” by the name of Donald Trump. And he is a false prophet. He is a false messiah. He will not lead the people to the Promised Land. Nay! He will lead them to death and destruction in the desert, while he retreats into his personal empire of properties and holdings and acquisitions.

Donald Trump is simply the face of a new fascist movement in the United States.In the 1960s this country was a primarily white, Anglo-Saxon, Christian nation. By 2016, a seismic shift had occurred, with minorities gradually becoming the majority and Christianity being replaced with secular liberalism. The silent majority, namely, white conservatives, who represent half of this nation, have been marginalized. They were convinced, for generations, to support country-club Republicans, people from Old Money, in the hope that wealth would trickle down. It didn’t and it will not. The wealthier they become the greedier they become.

Over the past decades, the one-percenters have seen their wealth increase exponentially while the income of white Americans has stagnated. The middle class, a status of stability, has disappeared. The so-called middle class is now no better off than the lower class. They live from paycheck to paycheck on the verge of homelessness. The Republicans, who were supposed to represent them, sold the country out to the obscenely rich, destroyed communities, and the country itself, through so-called Free Trade deals that only benefit multinational corporations. White, working-class, Americans are angry. We understand that. We need to understand that. They are angry for economic reasons and they are angry for religious reasons. This country, for good or bad, depending on how you view it, has undergone a shift in values that is staggering. The US is not the country that it used to be.

Noam Chomsky recently said this about the growing percentage of White Americans who are staring at the specter of poverty: “[they are facing] the dissolution of their lives and world…. [They] are sinking into hopelessness, despair and anger—not directed so much against the institutions that are the agents of the dissolution of their lives and world, but against those who are even more harshly victimized. Signs are familiar, and here it does evoke some memories of the rise of European Fascism.” But does Donald Trump direct their anger against the system that is impoverishing them? No. He directs their anger against their fellow victims, turning White against Black, Christian against Muslim, making sure that those whose economic security and civil rights are being stolen by the global elites can never see clearly enough to unite against them.

“I love the under-educated” says Trump. Why? Because he knows that the poorly-informed are easier to fool, nor does he show the slightest sign of wanting to better inform them. Tyranny loves to patronize ignorance because—like George Orwell said in his novel 1984—ignorance is its strength.

Donald Trump nonetheless is right about a number of things. He is right when he says that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a disaster that destabilized the entire Middle East. He is right when he says that the U.S. was partly responsible for creating ISIS. And he is right that the U.S. immigration system needs to be overhauled to cut down on the chances of ISIS agents entering the U.S. If certain forms of immigration are now acceptable even if they are illegal, something is terribly wrong with immigration policy, since it creates an “official” underclass of persons who can be arrested at any time and who can be used to further erode the power of the unions, as well as providing a ready commodity for the human traffickers; anyone who wants to economically exploit or sexually abuse his or her servants or employees will find things much easier if there is a large pool of illegal immigrants available for these purposes.

BUT: When Trump proposes excluding every member of a particular religious group from the U.S.—Muslim in this case—he is dead wrong, unconstitutional, un-American, and playing with fire.

When Dalia Mogahed recently told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd that Muslims should not continually be challenged to condemn terrorism—especially in light of recent statements by Trump and others—she was right. No government, no president and no presidential candidate has the right to demand that Muslims—as Muslims—condemn terrorism; if the federal government or any agency thereof were to make such a demand, a demand based entirely on religious affiliation, that would be a great blow to freedom of religion in this country—and anyone who thinks that such a precedent would not be turned against other religions, probably beginning with Christianity, is politically naïve and has not been paying attention. If the U.S. government can demand that Muslims take what amounts to a loyalty oath, such as Donald Trump has proposed, it can certainly demand that Christian churches support this or that social agenda or lose their non-profit status.

But there is one group who has not only the right but the duty to denounce terrorism, and that group is—Muslims themselves. The Holy Qur’an, through many ayat; the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, in many hadiths and through his covenants with the Christians and Jews of his time; and the holy shari‘ah as well, absolutely prohibit terrorist actions against any group, just as they prohibit making any sort of war against, or misappropriating the property of, peaceful Christians, peaceful Jews, and law-abiding Muslims.

Groups such as ISIS have violated every one of these laws, rulings and commands, slaughtering Muslims as heartlessly as they have killed Christians, Yezidis and members of other religions, and in doing so have put themselves outside the Muslim fold. Consequently it is the duty of Muslims not only to renounce the methods of these bands of terrorist mad dogs who have falsely appropriated and viciously soiled the name of Islam and the reputation of our Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, but to actively oppose them by any means necessary, doing all we can to see that they are exposed, defeated, and brought to justice—as if merely making excuses for ourselves, tremulously protesting that we are “not all terrorists”, were in any way an adequate or an honorable response.

Donald Trump or Barack Hussein Obama may accuse us or defend us, may flatter us or slander us, but to us their words mean nothing; they are dust in the wind. As Americans we are bound by the civil laws of the nation in which we live, but as Muslims, the words of presidents and presidential hopefuls can in no way bind us: our loyalty is pledged to the Prophet, to the Holy Qur’an, to Almighty and All-Just Allah, and to no-one else.